The British Episode: One Election and Two Terrorist Attacks

BY: Robin Koerner, Host
PUBLISHED: May 27, 2017

Since I’m in the UK and the UK is all over even the American news this week, I decided to do a “British show”.

I’m visiting family and the news is filled, of course, with the recent terrorist attacks and the general election, which is being held two days after I recorded this show, but two days before the show goes out.

My head is very much not in politics as I spend time with my loved ones, so in this show, I just share with you all the thoughts that have been kicking around my head as I listen to the news here in the UK: thoughts about how terrorists aren’t cowards, how assimilation is important for those who come (first or second generation) to the West from a foreign country and how it is achieved. I also ponder how one of the best-established facts about suicide terrorism applies to the recent attacks in England.

I share my thoughts in no uncertain terms about Trump’s comments about the Mayor of London, and what a disaster the American two=party system was to give us the choice we had in November last year…. and then explain how the choice the British have on Thursday is also utterly demoralizing. The Labour party has a deadly turn-Britain-into-Venezuela manifesto, but has a believable, authentic, conviction-driven (albeit misguided) leader, while the Conservatives, who seem much less dangerous than the Labour opposition, are led by a woman who seems to have no actual philosophical convictions and has all the sales skills of a wet rag, showing nothing of herself but just trotting out over-rehearsed lines that make her seem more like a hastily programmed robot than a human being who cares about anything or feels passionately enough about anything that she’ll engage serious questions as they deserve to be engaged – directly rather than with deflection and/or one-liners.  

It ain’t pretty. On either side of the pond.